Thoughts and random commentary centered on PvP, PvE, and the game as a whole. I'm interested in looking at the game from an analytical point of view, from it's design, to implementation, to both intended and unintended outcomes.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

In WoW Arena 3's RMP, or Rogue Mage Priest, is one of the most consistently successful combination of classes due to its heavy burst, control and complementary abilities. Imagine a psychic scream into blind into sap into sheepx3 and you get the idea of how much non-overlapping crowd control can be dispensed. It's sick nasty when it all flows together and provides a great amount of time to burn a target down quickly. Hello, smite...

Although I had leveled my mage as both deep frost and deep fire, I find myself inexorably drawn towards a 33/28/0 spec; aka PomPyro. Presumably it's because I'm a pretty poor mage when it comes to personal accountability a la "why is that warrior not sheeped?!" or "why did you CS that rogue?", but a quick search through the ArenaJunkies forums shows that PomPyro does have viability and there are some successful mages out there in that eThug world that have been tossin' their molten boulders at people's faces for years. BUT, research also shows that PomPyro is not nearly as popular as impCS/Frost; 17/0/44.

Since I've been doing well in the 5's bracket where our no-skill comp of ShadowPriest, FG Lock, PomPyro Mage, EleSham and Holy Pal have zerg trained the feces out of pretty much any team with a warrior, last night I figured i'd grab some of my buddys' alts and give RMP a try. While specced frost. I've got to say, i've never felt so helpless in my life and I really dont understand how frost mages even do any damage against a team that's remotely intelligent. It could have been that we were fighting alot of Warlock teams, Hunter teams, and teams with both a Warlock and a Hunter, where both pets decided that my undead ass needed two or 3 more holes, but, I learned quickly that Frostbolt should only be cast when you are either a) not being trained by ANYTHING that does damage or b) when you have Ice Barrier or Icy Veins up. Spell pushback sucks. Also, crying when your Barrier or IV gets dispelled and your rogue has the target in a 5 point kidney is absolutely permissible.

To that end, I think I cast a total of 2 frost bolts in each game and spent the majority of my time running about like a scared little girl, sheeping things off my priest (Chu! gerritoffovme!), Frost Nova-ing melee (I did remember this) and spamming my instants, which as a frost mage kinda sucks because that's limited to ice lance, fireblast and r1 cone of 'stupid with latency'. Fully half of my pets got 1 Freeze off before dying or me being chain cc'd, but to my credit, I did get 1 sweet shatter combo for around 6k damage somewhere amidst the confusion.

Towards the end, my priest buddy was getting worn out at my terrible frost play and I swapped back to PomPyro.. and surprise, surprise, definitive win. What I dont understand (yet) is why people like frost specs so much. Granted, the second iceblock and the extra novas are nice, but how fun can it be when all you do is spam instants because your main nuke has no spell pushback resistance? Mobility as frost kinda sucks due to no blazing speed and killing druids that know how to shift is pretty much a joke. Teams that don't play defensive when you pull your pet out deserve to lose and getting chain dispelled of all of your buffs means you cant cast anything anyways.

So, yeah, back as PomPyro now because it just fits better with my rushdown playstyle...

Besides, it's a beautiful thing when druids realize that they actually have to pay attention to the mage beyond just shifting to avoid shatters.

New blog, new focus, and as Hobbes once said "It's like having a big white sheet of paper to draw on."

Somehow, some way, I'll probably fuck it up something fierce, but for the time being let's just say that this blog is about my time sitting glassy eyed in front of my monitor, hopefully achieving some sort of progress.

So lets start by jumping in the good ol' cardbord box time machine and turn the dial back to 'way the fuck back' and give a little perspective as to how we got here.

In the beginning, there was City of Heroes or CoH as we called it. Ingenious, no? Amusingly, with the introduction of City of Retards (Villians), the moniker of CoH got dropped for CoX. Can never get enough CoX, eh? Evidently, alot of RP'ers can indulge frequently on CoX, because the PvP scene there became more stagnant than my pet bulldog who's just found a patch of sun to lie in. You're a dog, not a cat, stupid!

Anyways, CoX PvP sucked (and continues to suck) so a bunch of friends migrated to WoW and for some silly reason, rolled alliance on a PvE server, trying to establish ourselves as PvPers without much success(LOL @ old honor rewards system). A few months later, BC came out and for two seasons I mucked about about on my human Morgan Freeman lookalike warrior and on the dwarf alt rogue. Sadly, alot of time was wasted trying to manage a 'futility raiding' guild and a couple of months prior to Season 3, the core PvPers got fed up and rerolled on a PvP server as horde.

I rerolled a druid who dinged 70 (fortunately) right before Season 3 and hit the ground in travel form when the new season started with 5k arena points and maxxed honor. Season 3 was probably the first season I took seriously, and it evidently showed as I hit 2k on my Druid/Warlock 2's team. My 3's team hit 1900 at some point, but sadly, never got much further. 5's was never able to get off the ground and floundered at around 1850 at best.

Towards the end of season 3, interest in playing the druid tapered off and I rolled an undead mage, which through endless honor grinds, is at the point that he can be competitive. Gear wise, the druid's just missing his Brutal MH and shoulders and the mage is needs 4 more pieces of brutal, MH, OH, shoulders, yadda, yadda, yadda. I still play the druid and I'm learning the mage, and hopefully, by WotLK, I'll have made progress with both.